Here’s the A-List!

Okay. I know this is kind of a weird question… but how do you deal with your weekly meals, shopping, the whole feeding shebang? Does it get on top of you, or are you a well-oiled dinner making, lunch cutting machine? Or do you just eat out a lot because you are way too busy for this cooking stuff? I’ll tell you about us first.

We are a very busy household. Two boys at two different schools. Our shop and Brown Owls and making things for our wholesale customers keep us just millimetres short of insanity most of the time. But we like that. We USED to shop daily – thinking we’d eat better and it was more spontaneous and fun. Then I realised that we were spending heaps of money on crap supermarket food and the day would be clouded with the dreaded question ‘What will we make for dinner’ forever looming over the mid-afternoon horizon. It was not fun. I like fun. Something had to give.

We made some changes. We now shop weekly – with daily trips to our little Milk bar if we need milk or other sundry items. We go the market at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning. We sip coffee with our bed hair and munch melty, cheesy, stringy pizza slices and make a list and off we go. Shoppity shop. Sippity sip. In the beginning we just had a regular list – lines and lines of unrelated elements bumped up together – avocados were next to chicken breasts, garlic loaf schmoozed with tinned tuna… it was chaos. But somehow we managed. Sometimes we even saw Shannon (okay. only once. but it was really totally memorable.)

Also, we also used to be trolley-less. We would, instead, lurch hunchbacked about the peach-strewn aisles like some sort of eco-bagged-sherpas. Not a pretty site. We stopped shopping when we couldn’t carry anymore – as opposed to when we’d got everything we needed. It was stupid. We always seemed to be missing the most important things – leading to furtive late night supermarket trips. Stupid.

But things have changed (again) in these here parts. After some terse words over whether to buy the $59 trolley (cam) or the $99 trolley (pip) – we now roll our double-decker ($99) trolley about the market with our ALPHA-list. Yes. We have an Alpha-list. We got it for Christmas.

You see, Kirsty and I had some long discussions (okay, not that long – but I like to embellish and she might tell me off)… so Kirsty and I had some incredibly long discussions about lists and stuff. How they should be organised, columns, rows, that kind of thing. You know, Kirst. She likes to be organised. She’s a good influence on me.

Anyhoo, lo and behold, for Christmas Kirsty gave me the Big Book of Alpha-Lists. It’s fabric covered, it’s bound and it’s SO useful (click image below to enlarge). I carry it proudly at the market – face out so people can see how good it is and how messy and creative my writing is. I WANT them to want a list like mine. I want them to know how clever me and Kirst are. I want them to have list envy. It’s not mean, it’s just that I know their life would be heaps easier if they had a sensible list like mine! I’m helping them, you see. Admitting they have a problem is really important for them, isn’t that right?

As you can see from our list, it features not only messy, early morning writing, but also heaps of kid friendly meal options – recipe notes and categorised sections for produce and meat and other things. It’s totally helpful and conscientious. It sets the culinary week in stone for everyone and keeps us calm and un-hungry. (Admittedly we sometimes swap the meals around to different nights – but that’s because we’re flighty.)

This list is the best list you will ever meet. It’s totally the A to Z of all you can eat. Well… all you can eat at our house anyway. Or else you get nothing else til Breakfast time. Those are the rules.

xx Pip

PS – Don’t ask me to ask Kirsty to make you one. Because I said I wouldn’t. But you could ask her yourself. Then I’m off scot-free – and you can be an A-lister too.